Pulse On Tours: Melissa da Silva Talks Contiki Vacations' Future

Contiki Vacations president Melissa da Silva is a 20-year veteran of the youth travel market. A native of Northern California, she was with STA Travel, the student travel company, for 17 years both in the U.K. and in the U.S., and joined youth travel specialist Contiki Vacations as president in 2013.

Da Silva had previous experience with Contiki — as a student she traveled on a Contiki tour. Contiki offers tours for travelers 18 to 35 years old to Europe, Russia, Egypt, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Canada, South America and the U.S.

Melissa de Silva: We did. We had a good year in 2013 and 2014 looks like it’s going to be another good year. The last two weeks in particular were crushing last year’s numbers.

Can you give me any figures? How much growth was there?

Last year we grew at about 6.5 percent total, but if you’re looking at just the U.S., which also includes the Latin America market, it was double digits, 11 percent. So we had a really good year.

How did that compare with growth in 2012?

We did not have a good year in ’12, so 2013 was a turnaround year for us. And we’re seeing growth in what we call our exotics market, which is Latin America and Asia. Europe continues to be our bread and butter. Close to 80 percent of our customers will go to Europe. But Asia and Latin America have been growing at 20-plus percent year over year for the past three years. Asia is now our second largest destination after Europe.

Why do you suppose that is?

MdS: We think there are a number of reasons for that. First of all, we have a lot of customers who traveled with us before and they now want to go somewhere different. They don’t want to see Europe again, so this is another option for them. Also we get a lot of solo female travelers on those trips.

I think it’s because it’s easy to find someone to travel to Europe with you, everyone wants to go to Europe. So a girl can find a girlfriend to go to Europe with. But not everybody wants to go to Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. And Millennials, they want to do it [now], they don’t want to wait. So they find us and then they’ve got 20 other people they can travel with, and they can do it without having to wait.

Do you have more female solos than male?

Well, 60-plus percent of our travelers are female in general, even to Europe. And 50 percent across the board are solo. But we do have more solo travelers to those destinations than Europe. Europe is about 40 percent solo, and it’s closer to 60 percent in Asia and Latin America.

What other changes are you seeing in the marketplace?

Another trend we’re seeing over the past four or five years is that customers want much more of an experiential trip. They don’t want cookie cutter. They don’t want to do the run-of-the-mill tour. So we’ve been trying to shift our vacations to allow a lot more of what we call “me time.” It allows them to craft an individual experience within the framework of the guided vacation.

Of course we do all the main sights. So if we take you to Europe, we’re going to take you to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and we’re going to bypass the lines and all of that. But then there are other things that we’ll leave as an optional. So if they’ve got six, seven, eight free hours in a day, we’ll give them different options. And they can choose one of those or they can choose none of them and just go shopping, or whatever they want to do. So 40 different people on the trip will have 40 different experiences over the course of two weeks.

How long have you been doing that?

We brought in Me Time three seasons ago. And we’ve really been building on it. The other trend along the same lines is the desire for authentic food.

Twenty years ago many of our meals might have been in the hotel. Now we have almost no meals in the hotels, unless there’s absolutely no other option. We’re always out there trying to find a great little restaurant that is typical of the region we’re traveling in. They want the real authentic individual experiences.

So you took out some structured events and then offer them as optionals?

Yeah, exactly. Particularly the Millennials, they don’t want to feel like they’re following someone around with an umbrella. They don’t have that good of a perception of the tour. So it’s about us breaking down the barriers and letting them know that we have some fantastic options for them.

What new trips do you have?

We added Powder Rush in North America, so we’ve got an awesome ski trip that goes through Whistler. It was sold out for its inaugural departure. We also changed the way we offer tours in Latin America so they could all be combined. We noticed that a lot of our customers in Peru were going on to Argentina and Brazil, but they were going with other operators because we didn’t have dates that matched up.

So now you can take one of the trips, or you can just stay on and do a whole giant trip of almost 60 days in Latin America. And we added a Greek sailing. Last year we added a Turkish sailing, this year Greece. Sailing is a new thing for us.

Editor’s Note: A version of this article appeared in the February 2014 issue of Vacation Agent magazine.

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